Know Your Noodles Part 2 - Bee Hoon aka Vermicelli

Bee Hoon (vermicelli)There is the thin and the thick bee hoon. The thin version is translucent, dried and breaks easily when bought off the shelf. Before cooking it, it needs to be soaked in water. The most popular way the thin version is cooked - fried! So the steps for a simple fried bee hoon are: soak in water > fry in some garlic/onion, throw in an egg or some shredded cabbage, a dash of soya sauce for taste and colour and tadah!

You find fried bee hoon at almost any occasion either prepared at home or catered, from tea breaks at company events or seminars, to baby showers, picnics, home parties and even at funeral wakes. Whenever you see fried bee hoon catered or served at a friend's house, it is 95% likely you will see its complement - curry chicken! Fried bee hoon is a common breakfast food at coffeeshops too. For dinner, you can get fried bee hoon from tze char stalls at coffeeshops. It's really everywhere!!!

Another noodle dish that uses bee hoon is Mee Siam, which is bee hoon in a light and sour gravy topped with dried beancurd, beansprouts and a hard boiled egg. Other than getting Mee Siam at Malay stalls, you can get it throughout the day too at Toast Box outlets. Bee hoon is light and easy on the stomach so it’s also common for locals here to eat bee hoon soup (eg. fishball soup with bee hoon, sliced fish soup with bee hoon) when they are unwell.

The thick bee hoon (white in colour) is selected more as the noodle option for sliced fish soup. It's also a noodle option for several other foods - like yong tau foo and fishball noodles. Thick bee hoon is also the better half of Hokkien Mee. Some hawkers fry Hokkien Mee with the thin bee hoon too. Both versions are also popular for prawn noodles, where you can choose to mix bee hoon with yellow noodles.

Click here to know what yellow noodles are!